Hey there guys. Now, this is not the last chapter, the last one is coming next week, but this is what I have and I thought I’d kept you waiting long enough. So here we are. Enjoy!
Again, for this part of the story, I was not there, this is what Faye told me later on, and Scott verified.
Faye had been considering all of her options for a long time now. Keeping the baby, having an abortion, giving it up. If she kept the baby, she had to stay with Scott. He was a shitty husband but he could provide for the baby and give it the life an innocent creature deserved. But then, she was guaranteed to be unhappy for the rest of her life and, despite what most people might think, money is not the only thing a baby needs. It needs support, attention, love, and she wasn’t completely sure she could give that.
And she wouldn’t be able to live with herself knowing that she’d brought a child into the world only to cause them pain. A child should be brought into the world so that it can have every possibility to be happy, because God knows life is gonna fuck you up one way or the other, so having the chances in your favor doesn’t do you any harm. What if she left Scott, left me, and kept the baby? She wouldn’t have the money to provide, that was for sure. But she wouldn’t recent the baby either, because now, it wouldn’t be just a simple instrument someone used to manipulate her. It would be her choice, something she hadn’t had in more than she could remember.
So many ways in which everything could go wrong. So many ways in which life could screw you over. But she couldn’t have possibly imagined what would, actually, end up happening. None of us could.
It started when Mike and Louise invited me to a night out. They said I’d been doing so much for them that they felt they owed me, so they asked me out to a bar. They promised they would pay for everything, we could eat fried calamari and drink jars of beers. I wasn’t in the modd for it, lately I wasn’t in the mood for anything but declining seemed rude.
Louise didn’t know if to invite Faye. I told her there shouldn’t be a problem, but because of what had happened at Mike’s party, we all agreed that Scott couldn’t come. He was just bad for peace.
I called Faye, told her to be at the bar that Saturday. A part of me expected her to refuse, since it was a bar and she was pregnant after all, there was not much she could drink without alcohol. Despite that, she accepted gladly and joked about drinking a virgin Cuba Libre.
Her voice was odd. It sounded thick, as if she needed to make a conscious effort to make a sound. After assuring me she’d be there, the line went silent.
Once she’d hung up the phone, Scott walked into the bedroom. He sat by the edge of the bed, removed his watch and got under the sheets. They stayed in silence. The television humming in the background with the fake laughter of the contest shows. Faye ran her fingertips through the space where the mark was still showing. Scott had grabbed her so hard at Mike’s party, that the next day, a purple spot began to form. Now it was yellow and green, and it had stopped hurting too much.
“I said I was sorry,” Scott said. Faye didn’t reply, which irritated him. “Jesus, stop being a child and talk to me!”
“I just don’t understand,” Faye whispered finally. “Why would you want to be with me, when you clearly hate me so much.”
Scott frowned. “I love you!”
“No, you don’t. I know what love is, Scott. I’ve been loved, and you have no idea how to love someone.”
“There you go, Riley again.”
“This has nothing to do with Riley. We’ve been together for two and a half years and you’ve already given me two bruises.”
Yes, two. The first one he gave it to her when Faye started working at the bookstore. He grabbed her by the shoulders. Too much force in his grip. Something Faye had never told me.
“Why do you make it sound like it’s my fault, huh?” he said standing from the bed. He was yelling now.
“No? Whose was it then? Mine? Did I put your hands around my arms and made you squeeze as hard as you could? I’m tired of the way you treat me and if we’re having this baby you cannot keep doing this!” Faye’s voice began to crack, her tears building on the corner of her eyes.
“Doing what?” He turned to the wall. His tone of voice was still up. “Providing for you? Getting this really nice apartment for you?” he started hitting the wall “Buying back your family’s home for you?”
He kept punching the wall like a madman, “You did none of those things for me! You do nothing for me. All of it, you did it for you!” Scott wouldn’t stop punching the wall, which was making Faye more and more scared because she feared one of those punched would end up going for her. “Please, stop!” She started crying, but Scott wouldn’t stop. “Scott, stop, I’m begging you, just stop!”
After a moment, the dull bang against the wall ceased, followed by a loud shut of the door. Scott slept on the couch that night and Faye was thankful she could have that moment of peace, regardless of how short it was.
Their relationship had become much more unstable after the finding of the pregnancy and it only seemed to be getting worse by the second. Scott had become much more aggressive, erratic, as if he could explode at any minutes with the slightest provocation of not doing exactly what he wanted. But the final point came on that Saturday, the day we were supposed to meet at the bar. Mike, Louise and I knew we were going to arrive first because Faye hadn’t managed to get “permission” yet.
Louise, Mike and I arrived at seven, ordered some food and beers and began with this little celebration, while we waited for Faye.
Faye, on the other hand, had grown tired of asking Scott to “let her go”, so, in spite of his opposition, at eight, she began getting dressed.
Scott watched her without saying a word from the couch, where he was sitting, watching the game and drinking a bottle of beer.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ve told you a thousand times, Louise invited me to hang out with Mike and Riley and I am going, whether you like it or not. I’m not staying in tonight just ’cause you decided I can’t have fun anymore.”
Scott stood up. “Of course, and by having fun you mean Riley.”
“No, I mean going out and having some laughs with my friends!”
“But I can’t go…” he asserted.
“After the way you behaved at Mike’s party, can you blame them?”
“But Riley behaved great, right?”
“Well, since she’s been taking care of Emily almost every day so Mike can go to work and Louise can take care of her online store, I would say yeah, she’s been great to them.”
Faye grabbed her jacket and keys and was about to head for the door.
“This is her fault! Yours and hers! We were fucking happy before she showed up. Now look at this fucking mess!”
Faye couldn’t let that comment slide. She turned and walked up to Scott. “You think Riley did this? You think we were happy before she showed up? Are you completely blind!” she yelled “I’ve always been unhappy with you! Always! I told you I would never love you, I told you from the beginning and you decided to ignore it and pretend we were the perfect little couple while I died inside. I was so unhappy with you, that I even considered taking my own life. The only reason I didn’t do it, was because I couldn’t leave my mom alone.”
“Bullshit! We were fine, yeah, we had our issues but nothing like this.”
“Yes, because I was a fucking robot! Saying yes to everything you asked, no matter if it made me happy or not, and most things didn’t! So you know what? I’m gonna go out with my friends, we can keep going at each other’s throats afterwards. Bye.”
Scott let her go and sat back on the sofa. Faye headed for the exit. If only she would’ve left when she was supposed to leave, if only she would’ve gotten ready two minutes earlier, nothing would’ve happened. Scott would’ve let her go and they could’ve scream at each other later.
But as Faye reached for the door handle, she got a text message. The message belonged to Bill’s friend, the chemist. It read:
Hey, this is Jonas. Bill’s friend. Got back the tests on the pills you sent me. They are not birth control pills. They are the opposite, they facilitate conception. Hope it helps.
“You pig,” Faye murmured.
“What?” Scott asked turning to the door.
Faye went back towards him and yelled “You fucking pig! You changed my birth control pills for fertility pills!”
“What?” Scott played the idiot, but he had guilty written all over his face.
“Don’t you fucking lie! You found my pills and changed them! This is your fault, all of it! I cannot even believe I considered staying with you!” Faye said grabbing her head.
“What was I supposed to do? Just watch you run around with Riley and act like I didn’t know?”
“You what?”
“I knew! I’ve always known. Your stolen phone app doesn’t have the best password… I know each and every hotel you’ve been with, fucking her.”
“You hacked into my stolen phone app? Jesus. You know what? Maybe I like fucking Riley so much, because when she fucks me, I actually cum!”
There was a thud noise in the apartment, then silence. Faye touched her cheek, it was burning. She looked up at Scott, whose eyes were opened, filled with regret.
Faye received a slap from both Scott, and life. And she had to make a choice.
She could be Faye Keane, who would take that and leave it just as it was, no complains, no nothing; or be Faye Burton, who doesn’t take shit from anyone.
She chose to be Faye Burton.
Scott opened his mouth to apologize, but Faye impacted his cheek with her right hand, just as hard as he’d hit her.
“Don’t you ever fucking lay a finger on me again, you hear me? I’m Faye fucking Burton! And you can bet your ass I got a killer swing, too.”
Faye left the apartment and grabbed a cab. On the way to the bar, she noticed the left corner of her lip was bleeding. She licked her wound and swallowed the blood. She knew what she was going to do now. No doubt in her mine.
Faye arrived at eight thirty. As we saw her walk up to us, we stood up and received her with laughs, until we saw her lip was broken.
“Faye, what happened?” Louise asked.
“Nothing,” she replied, then grabbed me by the wrist and said, “I need to talk to you, in private.”
I nodded and we headed towards the back, where there waren’t so many people. Once it was private enough for her taste, Faye said, “I’m gonna raise the baby by my own. I’m leaving Scott. He can be as involved in the baby’s life as he wants but I will not stay with him. That goes for you, too. I am not leaving him for you, I’m leaving him for me. If you don’t wanna deal with me and a baby I understand, but if you want to be with me… I will always want to be with you. I’ll love you forever. But it is your choice.”
She left me without words, I wasn’t expecting such an out front proposition. “I—I don’t know what to say. I… of course I wanna be with you. We’ll figure something out. Apparently I’m good with kids.”
Faye smiled and hugged me, then she pulled away and kissed me. I hadn’t felt her lips on mine for so long that I thought my knees were going to give in. It was heaven. And very quickly, it turned into hell.
I felt something pushing me away from her, As I gazed up to what it was, I saw Scott grabbing Faye by the arm. He was pulling her away and towards the front door, Louise and Mike came, too.
I ran up to Scott and pushed him away from Faye and placed myself between them.
“You don’t get to treat her like that, ever!”
Scot grabbed me by the neck of my shirt and push me against a wall. I kicked him away from me and said, “I am not fighting you, Scott. Just leave.”
Scott pushed me, but this time, he wasn’t actually trying to push me away, he was trying to tempt me into throwing the first punch.
“Man, com’on! It’s Riley, your best friend,” Mike said “Just leave.”
The waiter said if we had a problem we should take it outside. “We don’t have a problem, he’s leaving,” Louise replied.
But he wasn’t. Scott was not leaving without a fight. He pushed me again and my determination to not fight him was becoming smaller and smaller. The third time he pushed me, I pushed him back, making him trip against the table behind him before falling to the floor. Faye placed herself behind me to pull me away from Scott. He stood up quickly, and with all his strength, he threw a punch at me.
“I should’ve taken that punch. It was my fault,” I say, knowing she does not agree with me.
“Why do you believe it was you fault?”
“Because I started it. If Faye and I wouldn’t have been sleeping together, she wouldn’t have said what she said to Scott, he wouldn’t have punched her, and wouldn’t have hacked into her phone account to find her at the bar with me. None of this would’ve happened.”
“You are doing it again, Riley. You are constructing a very intricate train of thought, just so that you can blame yourself for what happened. It is not your fault. You cannot control Faye, nor Scott. You couldn’t have possibly predicted what would end up happening.”
“But I could’ve taken the blow. None of it would’ve happened.”
“You don’t know that.”
“But I do.”
“No, you don’t. Maybe, if you would’ve taken the blow, nothing would’ve changed, maybe it would’ve. Maybe it was not your affair with Faye what caused Scott’s outburst, maybe it was, maybe they never were a good match and your presence just accelerated the inevitable, or maybe it didn’t; but you cannot live your life asking maybes about every decision you make, Riley. It is not healthy, it will not make you, or anyone happy. And here is a secret, if something doesn’t make you happy or bring any type of positive result to your life… it is useless.”
“But I wish I had, I wish I had taken the punch.”
“Now, that is a different thing.”
“I hated myself for not taking that punch for so long.”
“I know. That is why we are here. But you must forgive yourself for it. You owe it to yourself, and to the people who love you.”
“Yes, I guess. Because the point is that no matter how much I regret it, it doesn’t change the fact that… I didn’t take the punch.”
I didn’t. I dodged it and since Faye was behind me trying to pull me away, she took it full force. She received it on the chest, just up the heart. The punch was so strong it took her breath away, making her fall to the ground, making a horrible screeching sound for air.
“An ambulance!” Louise yelled. “Someone call an ambulance!”
I knelled next to Faye, she was turning purple and as I closed my arms around her, I saw a small spot in her crouch that began to grow larger.
I sat next to Mrs. Burton trying to console her. Mike and Louise were standing next to each other, neither of them could take a seat because their hands and legs were shaking. And Scott, well Scott was sitting on the floor, he wasn’t speaking to anyone, or even raising his eyes. He stared at nothing.
After hours of waiting, the doctor finally came asking for Faye Keane’s family.
“She’s stable,” he said “She’s got a cracked rib, but I don’t believe surgery will be necessary. She’ll need rest to recuperate.” After that, he stayed quiet. And of course, we knew.
“Just say it, already,” I said.
“She lost the baby. We’ll practice a D&C to make sure her uterus is empty of its content later on. I am very sorry.”
Barbara contained her tears and asked, “Is she awake. Can we see her?”
“Yes, she’s just been moved into a room, I’ll take you there but first she asked to see her husband. Scott, I believe.”
When he heard his name, Scott stood up, tried to clean himself up and we followed the doctor up to Faye’s room. Then he left. Scott stared at us for a moment before entering the room. He lasted fifteen seconds inside that room. No more. Then he burst out the door and down the hallway. After he got into that elevator, he never came back to visit Faye.
We stared at each other, wondering who would be brave enough to go in first. Mrs. Burton volunteered. We followed close behind.
Faye lay on the bed, with her eyes turned towards the window away from the door, and her hands resting on her lap. Her eyes were red, her skin pale and her lip broken. Mrs. Burton walked up to her daughter carefully, as if Faye were a baby and she were afraid to wake her up.
“Darling?” she said while she grabbed the chair on the corner of the room and pulled it close to Faye’s bed. Faye did not reply. “How are you feeling?”
Nothing. She didn’t make an effort to answer the question. Mike, Louise and I stood by the door, fearing coming any closer, fearing we would break her more than she already was.
Mrs. Burton tried again. “Do you want me to bring you something? Maybe something to drink or to eat? You’re probably hungr—”
“I was gonna keep it, mom,” Faye’s voice sounded like the bark of a puppy that’s drawing. Distant, distorted, hopeless. “I had finally decided to keep it and this happens. Why? Why did this happen?” Faye’s tone grew louder as her tears began to fall down.
Louise walked up to her and held her along with Mrs. Burton in a harmony of unspoken communication. Mike and I stood by the door, like idiots. Not even being close to knowing what it feels like to have a baby inside you, a baby you wanted… and to then, lose it. Faye cried for what seemed like an eternity. Her sobs were loud and her face turned red quickly as her cheeks became wet.
I had never seen her so sad. Not even when I left, but that could also be, because I wasn’t here when she grieved for my departure. To her, this was life telling her again that she couldn’t have anything. Nothing she wants. Everything good will always leave her, because she is not good enough to own anything worth having. Only then I stopped to consider how much Faye and I had in common at that point.
She’d been a kid who received the unconditional love of her parents. I had been a kid who had known how conditional a father’s love can be. But we grew up to be adults who had little to no control over their own lives and demons, who’d lost everything and couldn’t quite bring themselves to get it back.
Faye was discharged from the hospital the next day and sent home with a following appointment to remove what was left of the baby inside her. She stayed at her mom’s throughout those weeks. I went to visit her every day after Connor and I closed the bookstore. And without Faye taking care of everything, the bookstore was a lot more work than I remembered.
Faye didn’t really speak to me. Actually, that is not true. She didn’t speak to anyone. She took her time to recover emotionally and at that moment, I couldn’t deal with it. She never blamed for what had happened, but I definitely blamed myself. Every day I would get up, walk into the bathroom, look in the mirror and think ‘You piece of shit. This is all your fault. All of it. You’re disgusting! I hate you!’ Every time I watched Faye cry, I would curse at myself and remember what the Colonel said. That this is the only thing I can bring. Violence is second nature, isn’t it?
The better Faye got, the worse I felt about myself. She began talking again, and I retrieve onto myself. The more she repeated it was not my fault, the more I believe it was. I couldn’t look at my face in the mirror, I couldn’t. I couldn’t tolerate me.
I just couldn’t.
Everything I thought about was the Colonel. The bodies I’d left behind, how this baby was my latest victim, and only God new if the final. The memories hadn’t gone away, they were still there, still haunting me and always part of who I am. Fucking things up was really the only thing I was good at.
That day, I was in my room. I sat on my bed thinking about the Colonel’s words. Thinking about how I should’ve let him die the way he wanted to. A hero. How my mistake caused the death of sons, brothers, fathers, sisters, wives. Thinking over and over again how much pain I had, single handedly brought upon so many people, including Faye. She’d decided to have the baby, and because I couldn’t take the fucking punch, she had nothing now.
There is a point where you can no longer keep the bad thoughts at bay. Where all the pills in the world won’t shut them up. And I was tired of pretending they were not there. In the back of my head, never leaving me alone.
Truth be told, I know what happened. I just don’t remember it. I have flashes of popping pills like candy and passing them with alcohol, quickly and painlessly. One after the other I shoved them down my throat and drank gulps of rum afterwards.
After that…. Nothing.
Comment